“In all of this,” the article said, “the aforementioned Donald John Trump has, by his statements, brought the high office of the President of the United States in contempt, ridicule, disgrace, and disrepute, has sown seeds of discord among the people of the United States, has demonstrated that he is unfit to be President, and has betrayed his trust as President of the United States to the manifest injury of the people of the United States, and has committed a high misdemeanor in office.”
While impeachment over a tweet would seem absurd, an impeachment for insulting members of Congress is not without precedent. Impeachment Article X against President Andrew Johnson in 1868 was that the president “did attempt to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach the Congress of the United States.” But that’s among the reasons why the Johnson impeachment was considered disreputable.
Green’s resolution was again tabled in a floor vote. What was surprising is how many Democrats were on board with such a petty pretext. This time, 95 Democrats voted against tabling the impeachment resolution. That’s almost twice as many votes as the December 2017 resolution. Still, a bipartisan 332 members voted to table.
Trump was in Greenville, North Carolina, getting ready for a rally when the vote occurred. He told the crowd about the lopsided margin of the impeachment vote. He also tweeted, “The United States House of Representatives has just overwhelmingly voted to kill the Resolution on Impeachment, 332-95-1. This is perhaps the most ridiculous and time-consuming project I have ever had to work on. Impeachment of your President, who has led the … Greatest Economic BOOM in the history of our Country, the best job numbers, biggest tax reduction, rebuilt military and much more, is now OVER. This should never be allowed to happen to another President of the United States again!”
The Squad Has ‘Unstoppable Momentum’
Impeachment was, of course, not over. Even if Trump’s impeachment articles weren’t going to reference The Squad, the four freshmen would be the cause of the Democrats’ kamikaze dive.
“The power and the influence of The Squad has been in and of itself a pretty spectacular phenomenon, and it’s something that Speaker Pelosi is not accustomed to,” Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a Republican member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told me. “She’s not used to individuals in her own party standing up against her. She had that in The Squad, and they didn’t back down. They continued to make their voices known, and it seems every time they did so, their popularity increased all the more. I think it pushed the speaker into a corner that she could not ignore. She was not going to succeed in squashing them.”
Pelosi was popular with progressives again, but the caucus didn’t really unite behind her. House Democrats, including Pelosi, were united behind The Squad. With one Trump tweet, the Democrats’ civil war ended. Meanwhile, Pelosi knew that if she wanted to keep her troops together, there was only one direction she could go, even if it meant arm-twisting the moderates — because arm-twisting the progressives was too much work.
Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez posed for a photo together, both smiling big. The 79-year-old speaker was like the grandparent seeking to prove how cool she really was by hanging with the 30-year-old freshman member. On July 26, Pelosi posted the photo on social media. She tweeted, “Today, Congresswoman @RepAOC and I sat down to discuss working together to meet the needs of our districts and our country, fairness in our economy and diversity in our country.”
AOC didn’t share the picture on her social media, however, indicating she knew she was the cool kid and Pelosi got a boost from her, not the other way around. One senior congressional aide close to the impeachment process told me in an interview that, as it was commonly known, “There is a direct parallel with impeachment and the power of The Squad.” Simply put, “Moderates don’t want to take on AOC,” the staffer said.
Had Pelosi continued fighting The Squad, she would have lost. Trump inadvertently threw her a life vest by his lack of Twitter discipline.
“Ever since, the Democrats have been the surrender caucus. The Squad had unstoppable momentum,” the staffer added.